The Hitchens-Cockburn spat has been going on for quite a long
time, certainly long before the Hitchens/Blumenthal incident. As always in these
situations one must ask to what extent it is rooted in real political differences and to
what extent it is simply a manifestation of personal animosities and competitiveness. I
suspect that the latter is more crucial here than the former. At any rate both men can be
charged with betraying leftist ideals in various ways. In Cockburn's case through his
championing of the militias and as Lou emphasizes, his support for Indian gambling
casinos. While Hitchens has ruffled feathers with his anti-abortion stance. With Cockburn,
the championing of the militias is probably not out of line with his idiosyncratic
Stalinist politics since after all the German Communists in the early 1930s for a time
collaborated with the Nazis in fomenting strikes in order to undermine the Weimar
Republic. I think for Cockburn anything that disrupts the status quo, even if it comes
from the lunatic right is viewed by him as good. Likewise Cockburn's cultivation of an
image as what Lou calls a " backwoods misanthropic crank" is I suppose a return
to certain family traditions, in this case perhaps not so reminiscent of father Claud, as
of cousins Evelyn Waugh (and his son Auberon).

It is interesting to note that both men cut their political teeth in British Trotskyist
politics, with Cockburn, arguably, returning more or less to the Stalinist politics of his
father, Claud and Hitchens remaining more or less a left social democrat. I remember back
in the '80s, Hitchens wrote a highly laudatory article on the left Labour politician, Tony
Benn for Mother Jones. On the other hand Hitchens has not been shy about attacking such
sacred cows as Mother Teresa and Princess Di.

As far as Sidney Blumenthal is concerned, I think here is a case of rather naked
careerism and opportunism. Back in the 1970s, he used to write Marxist screeds for The
Boston Phoenix and The Real Paper. By the 1980s he graduated to writing for The New
Republic. In 1991, when candidate Bill Clinton was engaged in vigorously courting support
within the media, Blumenthal was one of the first journalists to support him. After
Clinton was elected president, Blumenthal's ass-kissing of Clinton began to regarded even
within The New Republic as a kind of standing joke. However, it eventually paid off for
him in the form of a White House job and the rest was history.